“Got half a deer left,” Danford agreed. “Cold like this? The meat sure ain’t souring none.”
“Hell, it’s done froze solid,” Simms chortled. “Have to whack pieces off with the ax to get cooking size.”
“I think maybe we ought to—”
“Hallooo the camp!” a voice called from the bluff above.
Toby blinked, half unsure if he’d heard what he thought he’d heard. Had to be. Danford and Simms were looking wide-eyed, startled.
“Who in hell?” Toby muttered, oddly unfazed that he didn’t immediately cringe and expect his father to appear out of the air to damn him for his profanity.
The three of them bundled their way out of the snow-capped shelter, peering owlishly up at the figure on the ridge above the caprock.
Had Toby not grown so used to looking at his companions and their manner of tacked-together dress, he’d have thought it an apparition, some mockery of a human, bundled, snow-packed, and windblown as it looked. A rifle was held crossways, and the man was riding bareback.
“Hello yerself,” Toby called. “My God, what are you doing out here? Who are you?”
The man reined his horse around, the animal blowing white clouds as it half stumbled, looking exhausted as it followed the trail around and down to the floodplain. Behind followed a weary packhorse, ice clinging to its hair on the windward side.
The rider pulled up, took two tries, and finally slid off his horse. He barely caught himself, looking as if his legs were about to fold.
“Eli, help me give him a hand. Silas, see to those poor horses.”
Toby hurried forward and got an arm around the man’s shoulders. Snow cracked loose and Toby could feel the man shivering in his layers of blankets. A bundle of what looked like cloth had been wrapped around the man’s head, the right side dark and . . . bloody?
Together Danford and Toby got the man into their shelter, easing him down in front of the fire. Long red hair—filled with ice and frozen blood—hung over his collar; the freckles on the man’s pale face stood out. But the green eyes turned keen as the big man reached out to the fire.
“Aye, and I half figgered meself wolf meat,” he whispered. “Yer the Astorians, then?”
“Who?” Toby asked.
“Heard tell from the ’Rapaho. Black Lightning’s village is here about somewhere. Seven of Astor’s Pacific Fur Company men were wintering at the Red Buttes. I found the cabin ye built. Can’t figure for the life of me why ye’d leave it fer this?”
“Pacific Fur Company? Astor?” Eli had a puzzled look on his face. “Who’s that?”
“Must be that rich feller up in New York,” Toby said. Then to the man, “Sorry, mister. Haven’t seen no other white men. We’re soldiers. First Tennessee Volunteers. I’m Corporal Toby Johnson. This is Private Eli Danford, and that fella seeing to your horses, he’s Silas Simms. We’re under orders from General Andrew Jackson. Hunting a dangerous traitor.”
The man’s green eyes had narrowed. “Hunting a traitor? Aye, and in all the world, I wonder if it wouldn’t be John Tylor?”
“You know him?” Toby almost gaped in wonder.
“Aye, laddie. Who’d ye think give me this?” He indicated the clotted blood on his cheek and the head wrapping.
“Can you take us to him?”
The man gave Toby a crafty sidelong look. “He’s with the Snakes.”
“Do you know how to find them?”
“Aye, laddie.” A smile bent the man’s lips, the fire’s heat beginning to melt the ice frozen in the red beard. The first drips spattered on the big man’s chest. “I’m Fenway McKeever. Glad t’ make yer acquaintance.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
W. Michael Gear is a New York Times, USA Today, and international best-selling author with over 17 million copies in print worldwide. His books have been translated into 29 languages. A Spur Award–winning author, his western fiction has been taught in university courses in both Western literature and anthropology. Gear lives on a remote Wyoming ranch where he raises trophy-winning bison with his wife—author Kathleen O’Neal Gear—two shelties, and a flock of wild turkeys.
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Flight of the Hawk: The Plains Page 24